A Moodle Commercial

Here's a quick video from YouTube that you can use to give new or potential users a bird's eye view of what Moodle can do.

It doesn't cover the step by step, but it does give a great, anecdotal overview of how Moodle can increase efficiency in the classroom.

Here's the original post (which seems to be part of a university course assignment): http://blogs.ubc.ca/etec522sept09/2009/11/29/ernies-elevator-pitch-for-moodle-to-school-districts/

A Real Moodler - Carla Cross

A few weeks ago I contact Carla Cross to congratulate her on having such a successful course on GlobalClassroom. The classroom is 8th Grade English and I think it's successful because of the student engagement and activity that it attracted. Over the course of this semester Carla's course became one of the top 10 links clicked on of all Globalclassroom.us urls. In fact, at the end of September Carla's students had visited her course over 12,000 times in the previous 30 days.

That's a lot of visits by less than 100 students.

Setting up a Moodle course with information is easy, but setting it up in such a way that encourages students to visit the site again and again takes skill, patience and expertise. I let Carla know about her course and asked if she'd be willing in talking about her experience with Moodle. Below is what she had to say. A great read if you're looking for some ways to improve your Moodle usage.

I teach in a small Midwestern community-Green Valley, Illinois. Ours is a middle school building which serves sixth through eighth grade (which is a part of a unit district). There are about 280 students in our building and approximately 1500 students in the entire district (k-12). I am a veteran teacher with almost twenty-five years in education who recently switched from special education to English. When I began working on my masters in the CTER program at the University of Illinois, I began taking classes online. My first class introduced me to moodles and required that I create one as a culminating project (two years ago). I liked the idea so much that I searched for another way to put my course online when I came across ILGloblalclassroom. I spent the rest of that summer creating a moodle for my class. When the school year began (last year), I began utilizing it in class.

This is the second year that I have used the moodle as my primary means of instruction. Although I supplement the moodle with traditional classroom lecture at least once each unit, most of the students' work is done in the moodle. Reactions have been mixed. Students that enjoy computers and/or enjoy learning in general seem to really enjoy the moodle. Students that have coasted along in classes by doing only part of their class work and day dreaming while the teacher lectures complain that they prefer classroom instruction. I believe that this is because while using the moodle, they must be engaged in their learning; while a teacher is lecturing, they can "pretend" to be engaged by appearing to pay attention. I particularly enjoy using the moodle because not only does it force the students to be engaged and active in their learning, but it allows my class to instruct in two areas (English and technology). Students learn basics about computer usage and technology as they use the moodle. I have received compliments from high school English teachers about the incoming freshmen's preparedness for their courses, so I guess that it contributes to that success.

I must admit that as of yet I have not used all of the tools that the site has to offer. At present, I love utilizing the test feature. The test is scored for me; I can quickly analyze each question; I can easily print out a test report. That makes testing much easier and less complicated. My advice to someone that is just starting out is that the moodle should never be stagnant. Note how each unit is used by the students then adjust accordingly. If all (or many) students perform poorly on a section, survey the students to find where the problem lies then adjust.

Moodle Q&A: Easy Extra Credit in the Moodle Grade book

I field questions about Moodle daily and they are often the fodder for this blog. Our users challenge me daily to find new solutions to simple and complex problems and to test and stretch the boundaries of Moodle on GlobalClassroom. So, from now on I'll let you know when I'm fielding a user submitted question by the post title (Moodle Q&A) and in the tags/labels.

Today's question comes from California, the teacher asked,

I can't figure out how to add extra credit. It always comes up as an assignment that can lower a students grade. What grading system do I use and how do I set it up?

Excellent question.

Unfortunately, Moodle 1.9.5, according to the Moodle.org docs is better suited to provide for extra credit. Right now we're running 1.9.4 beta (but upgrading soon). However after playing around a little bit today I found the absolute EASIEST way to create extra credit assignments in your Moodle course. The key is 2 parts:

1. that you create a sub category in your gradebook and include all assignments
2. that all of your grades add up nicely to a whole number like 100 (using Sum of Grades)

Here's how I set up a course for extra credit. First, I tallied up all my assignment points and made sure they added up to 100 points (this will allow me to add extra credit assignments later that will bring the total possible points over 100).

In my example course I have 2 assignments, each worth 50 points (though your course may have 20 or 30 assignments which will make the organization a little bit harder, but no less important).

Both of the assignments are currently listed in the default grade category given to all courses (and named the same as the course title). You can view the hierarchy of your course grading categories by accessing your grades, clicking the drop down "view" and selecting Edit --> "Categories and items".

On the Categories and Items page you should see something like this (which is a hierarchy of your course categories--currently there is one--and a list of your assignments):

Next we're going to add a new category which will include all of your assignments already created (which add up to 100). Click "Add category" and on the next page choose the following attributes:

• Name the category, I named mine "Assignments"
• Aggregation: Sum of Grades (because we want them to add up to 100)
• you may ignore the rest (but you probably also want to make sure that no lowest grades are being dropped)

Once complete click "Save Changes".

When viewing the categories and grading items again use the "Move" button to arrange all of your assignments that sum to 100 to the newly created sub-category. Continue until all of your assignments are listed under that sub-category.

At this step you can add your extra credit assignment and adjust the points to equal however many extra points are available in your course (or if you did already, move it outside and below the sub-category). When all is said and done your category/item view should look like this (plus a few more assignments):

Finally, we're going to edit the default grade category to ensure that the grading works. Click the edit button on the Categories and Items page.

On the next page do two things, make sure it's set to "Sum of Grades" and check the box to "Aggregate including Subcategories". Save your changes and then use the view drop down or bread crumb navigation to return to your grader view.

I added an example student to my course so I could make sure that the extra credit feature was working and to test the computation.

As you grade assignments the student's total grade will reflect their progress. If and when they complete an extra credit assignment you can edit it and those points will simply be added to their aggregate score (which should have a total possible score of over 100 points). In the example below, the student got 50/50, 40/50 and 10 points of extra credit (bringing their points total to 100/110).

And that's the simplest and fastest (but maybe not the best) way to add extra credit to your course.

If you have questions you'd like to see answered here please email me at support@globalclassroom.us. Thanks!

Great Post and a Real-life Moodle Example: "Avoiding the String Effect"

Jen Deyenberg, a Moodler from Canada has a really great blog that touches now and then on her use of Moodle in the classroom. If you're interested in how she uses Moodle for her 5th grade class then she's a great resource to check out.

This past week Jen wrote "Avoiding the String Effect In Moodle". The post covers her use of a Moodle hack which allows you to create a Moodle like a web page. We've covered the process before, but Jen does a great job explaining how this process might be used in a real world application: making a collaborative classroom that focuses on the 2010 Olympics.

This is what the course looked like after setting up the unseen resources to make it look more like a web page:

The post highlights how specifically to arrange your Moodle course in order to create a classroom that looks more like a website, check it out if that interests you. And do check out Jen's blog in general!

For more ways to jazz up your Moodle, check out these related posts:

• Real World Moodle: unseen resources
• Jazzing up your Moodle: part 2

Great Post: "Moodle is an Airport!"

I love reading other people's perspectives and opinions about Moodle. They never fail to make me realize something new or to think about Moodle in an fresh, interesting way. ZaidLearn recently posted about Moodle and what it means to him and his organization in a post titled "Moodle is an airport, not a total solution!"

His point, I think, is that Moodle is a just one piece of your overall pedagogical tool belt. It's a central meeting place that provides easy ways to track student activity, post quizzes, and create engaging activities (glossary, wikis, discussion forums).

If you ask me, Moodle is a good meeting place (airport or space station), or a starting point where we get together to discuss and share ideas, before taking off using both inbuilt and integrated learning tools to experience engaging and enriching learning adventures beyond any single VLE can provide (ZaidLearn "Moodle is an Airport...").

It's a great read if you're curious about what Moodle can/can't offer and why it's valuable to 1000s and 1000s of organizations (and growing) world wide. Enjoy the read!